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Improving Supercharger Availability $0.40 idle fee
- Thread starter Lump
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- Tesla Inc.
disagree
hos epi to polu
From another thread about this.
Do idle fees apply when "most" stalls are not occupied and if the SC is "basically" deserted?
Yep.
Just a quick reminder that tweets aren't policies.
Do idle fees apply when "most" stalls are not occupied and if the SC is "basically" deserted?
Yep.
Just a quick reminder that tweets aren't policies.
I believe the alert you received on your phone had less to do with policy, than it did programming.From another thread about this.
Do idle fees apply when "most" stalls are not occupied and if the SC is "basically" deserted?
Yep.
Just a quick reminder that tweets aren't policies.
disagree
hos epi to polu
I apologize but I honestly don't understand what you mean. Is it that the programming is outpacing the policy, so no idle fee would actually be charged and @PDFS didn't need to move his car to avoid paying fees? That's not much comfort.
The policy announcement shouldn't have been made until they considered what Musk himself thought was a pretty obvious collection of exceptions. It suggests that Tesla has some fairly incompetent execs.
I don't agree. I think she's an outlier to one side, if you're an outlier to the other.
And I don't mean any disrespect to you or your wife, but if someone won't own or drive a car because they have to consider others in their decision process, then the policy has been validated. It has motivated a change that improves access to Superchargers. Whether that achieves Tesla's other goals is up to them to decide. But this policy is about "Improving Supercharger Availability."
So is it doing that, did the queues in California disappear?
p.s. You keep equating app watching with consideration for others. I guarantee you, there are tons of extremely considerate people who still would never want to tie what they are doing into some app notifications. That is just not how "regular people" roll. I suggest you may be in a bit of an engineering bubble on that one.
This is common. The landlord doesn't want to commit all the spaces with supercharger stalls for exclusive Tesla use until they see what the demand is like. We should preferentially use these spaces, so later arrivals don't get "legitimately" ICEd.
I am fine with the current policy as is, at least for now as a trial. I do think that @AnxietyRanger has a point, and I am beginning to better understand his approach.
He is not asking for no idle fees, he is simply trying to address the unknown due to variability in rate of charge, during a charge, right? I think, to sum it up in one phrase, what you are asking for is this:
So, @AnxietyRanger, let me see if I can put into play what you are proposing:
1. You arrive to a Supercharger with X miles remaining your battery. You have your charge limit set to 80%.
2. You plug in, and the dash says: “You have 50 minutes until charge completed. You will be charged an idle fee of $0.40 per minute at this time”.
3. You look at your watch, and happily skip away to enjoy your meal with a big grin on your face knowing that you are driving the coolest car in the world.
4. While you are gently slicing through your filet mignon, or slowly sipping your pumpkin slice latte, or savoring your Happy Meal, unbeknownst to you, one of two things happens:
This sounds pretty good. My only concern is how the estimated time to completion is calculated. I have received an estimate right after plugging in, but a more accurate estimate about 60 seconds later. This does not help with the average and majority user such as with @sorka‘s wife above. Perhaps no estimate should be given until the car gets a good sense, and since most drivers just plug in and walk away, as soon as the estimate is known, a (reliable) alert is sent to their phone.
He is not asking for no idle fees, he is simply trying to address the unknown due to variability in rate of charge, during a charge, right? I think, to sum it up in one phrase, what you are asking for is this:
Charge an idle fee starting at the estimated time of charge completion, or when charge has been completed, whichever is latter.
So, @AnxietyRanger, let me see if I can put into play what you are proposing:
1. You arrive to a Supercharger with X miles remaining your battery. You have your charge limit set to 80%.
2. You plug in, and the dash says: “You have 50 minutes until charge completed. You will be charged an idle fee of $0.40 per minute at this time”.
3. You look at your watch, and happily skip away to enjoy your meal with a big grin on your face knowing that you are driving the coolest car in the world.
4. While you are gently slicing through your filet mignon, or slowly sipping your pumpkin slice latte, or savoring your Happy Meal, unbeknownst to you, one of two things happens:
a. The charge rate on your car sudden speeds up because the gentlemen you paired with finished (there were no unpaired stalls available when you arrived). Now, following the rule above, instead of 50 minutes to completion, it is only 35 minutes to completion. You receive a text notification that your charge is almost complete. Idle fees will begin in 15 minutes (50- 35)
You still get charged idle fees based on the initial 50 minutes estimate, not on the new 35 minutes. Though, because you are a considerate person, you move your car early anyway, or
You still get charged idle fees based on the initial 50 minutes estimate, not on the new 35 minutes. Though, because you are a considerate person, you move your car early anyway, or
b. The charge rate on your car suddenly drops because the charge handle got too hot. It is now going to take 65 minutes to complete your charge.
You get charged an idle fee when the car completes charging at 65 minutes, not 50.
5. There is no grace period.You get charged an idle fee when the car completes charging at 65 minutes, not 50.
This sounds pretty good. My only concern is how the estimated time to completion is calculated. I have received an estimate right after plugging in, but a more accurate estimate about 60 seconds later. This does not help with the average and majority user such as with @sorka‘s wife above. Perhaps no estimate should be given until the car gets a good sense, and since most drivers just plug in and walk away, as soon as the estimate is known, a (reliable) alert is sent to their phone.
Yes, the queues are gone. Waits are over. Ask a ridiculous question, get a ridiculous answer.
I think that is what I am saying, or is it the opposite in that the policy is outpacing the programming? Maybe both. The current programming it appears is based on the initial policy. The policy was shortly after updated to allow longer stays at empty Superchargers. The programming was not updated to reflect that. That, or they have decided to not change the programming for alerts at all, and handling this on the back-end. I would not mind this, as it still reminds people to move, whether they are charged an idling fee or not. Or, worse, each person who receives an idle charge under such circumstances, would have to contest it, after which Tesla, with a no questions asked attitude (hopefully) and writes it off.
But seriously: What is your (or others) gut feeling, is it helping?
Also to return to the other point of my message - the main issue here isn't consideration. There are of course tons of both considerate, inconsiderate and everything in-between people in the world, that's a given. We agree to like considerate people better than inconsiderate people, sure. But that's almost beside the point. What is the point is that all those people will usually gravitate towards solutions they subjectively find reasonable and appealing (not necessarily in that order).
You can be the most considerate person (manners-wise) on the planet and yet choose not to bother yourself with an unreasonable EV charging regime, if the ICE does its thing for you without such issues. That's the real competition for the mindshare of people like sorka's wife, whom I don't think we know enough about to say isn't considerate...
She may well be very much considerate, but simply considers unreasonable the demands an EV is seen as imposing on her, when a perfectly good alternative exists: the ICE. If so, her issue aren't the other people at the charger that she wants to trample on with her alleged bad manners, her issue is sorka who put her in that predicament in the first place. If so, she'd be very happy behaving nicely and considerately at the gas tank, because that would seem reasonable to her... Jumping through all these idiotic-to-her hoops to drive an EV would simply be unreasonable.
Keep adding demands instead of taking them away and you are pushing people like sorka's wife away from EVs, not towards them.
It has very little to do with consideration for others - or lack thereof - and everything to do with what is subjectively seen as a superior solution.
Excatly right, brilliantly put. Thank you.
As for your note on the estimate getting better a bit later, I would be fine with the car demanding you to wait for a while to get an estimate. I mean, Tesla could toy with the car software to their hearts content to improve the estimates, the usability etc... The basic idea would be offering predictability that a) regular folks can understand and b) that allow for meaningfully spending the Supercharging break. How that is exactly done - I'm sure there could be multiple ways...
Anyway, I think both a) and b) are important in removing EV adoption obstacles, that the charging demands obviously are for a lot of people.
And? Paying the fee is fine. They would have been taking up the stall anyway, and at least now they'll have a financial motive to get back as quickly as they can, and if they don't at least they'll be contributing to building even more SC locations.
Cyclone
Cyclonic Member ((.oO))
In my opinion, if an ICE wants to park THAT far from Dillards, I'm not about to complain. That walk will take 5 minutes minimum!
CuriousG
Active Member
Don't forget, if she can't be bothered to take out (literally) the gas pump after fueling once let alone four times, it's not a stretch to think she would bother to look at the app. So I think in sorka's case, the wife is the exception rather than rule.
Wife just said she's never driving the Tesla again......
I agree Tesla would probably be fine by you just paying the fee, though on TMC people have been advocating lifetime bans and shaming at the service center when you go pay your dues.
If you assume paying the fee is fine for the user, it gets a bit different - I find regular folks do not really appreciate penalty charges. There is something sore about them, especially if you feel they are not reasonably avoidable. A surprise idle charge because charging ended 30 minutes sooner than you expected will not be welcomed.
Maybe these people will get on with the program. Or maybe they will go ICE instead.
I seriously doubt that is a bothering or consideration issue. Carelessness, of course.
And yes, it does tell how little many regular folks pay attention to car things.
But if you guys really think such people will install an app and stay glued to that during the charging break to know when it finishes, when there is an alternative of not doing that (the ICE), you may be in for a rude surprise.
Who knows, a lot of you seem very confident I'm wrong to have such fears, so we shall see. Maybe you're right.
I guess my point is, this is like the government raising taxes. You can raise taxes by 10% and expect to get 10% more tax income. That's the way it certainly could go in a vacuum. But the raised taxes affect behaviour of the subjects and you may actually end up making less, perhaps even less than before and wreacking all sorts of havoc you did not expect.
A city doubled their parking fees in one area in the hopes of adding to their coffers. Instead people just stopped parking there, business in the area languished (less tax income) and they actually made less money than before from parking.
This thinking can affect Tesla's policy in two ways:
1) While I do think this policy will curb major abuse (which is good, but would be achievable though a much more benign policy as well than a 5 minute grace), it will probably be offset somewhat by people extending their charging to 100% to avoid the quite graceless grace period sneaking up on you. It may actually increase charging periods at times - and it may result in added battery warranty claims or more charging events per car per trip if batteries deteriorate prematurely as a result.
2) More importantly, saying things like "this policy is validated" by the inconsiderate-considered EV users risks that taxman's dilemma. Introducing such a policy may be, in isolation, reasonably assumed to lessen inconsiderate use of Superchargers, once such use is identified, and thus result in better availability of such. So, validated - in theory. But punishing people acting badly only works if those people have no lucrative alternatives. For a commercial product, people have alternatives, especially when they have no specific EV requirement.
In this case the change may not be that those people start to behave. It may result in these people and people like them (as well as people dependent on them, arguably likes of sorka if they make mutual car buying decisions) shying away from EVs altogether. And suddenly I would think a lot of people here would find that a bad thing from a competely different perspective...
A city doubled their parking fees in one area in the hopes of adding to their coffers. Instead people just stopped parking there, business in the area languished (less tax income) and they actually made less money than before from parking.
This thinking can affect Tesla's policy in two ways:
1) While I do think this policy will curb major abuse (which is good, but would be achievable though a much more benign policy as well than a 5 minute grace), it will probably be offset somewhat by people extending their charging to 100% to avoid the quite graceless grace period sneaking up on you. It may actually increase charging periods at times - and it may result in added battery warranty claims or more charging events per car per trip if batteries deteriorate prematurely as a result.
2) More importantly, saying things like "this policy is validated" by the inconsiderate-considered EV users risks that taxman's dilemma. Introducing such a policy may be, in isolation, reasonably assumed to lessen inconsiderate use of Superchargers, once such use is identified, and thus result in better availability of such. So, validated - in theory. But punishing people acting badly only works if those people have no lucrative alternatives. For a commercial product, people have alternatives, especially when they have no specific EV requirement.
In this case the change may not be that those people start to behave. It may result in these people and people like them (as well as people dependent on them, arguably likes of sorka if they make mutual car buying decisions) shying away from EVs altogether. And suddenly I would think a lot of people here would find that a bad thing from a competely different perspective...
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I usually agree with your posts but I think you missed it on this one. Most people consider cars as simply transportation not a lifestyle like many of us so while I agree everyone needs to be considerate this is a multi-dimensional problem of which courtesy is just one part. Easy access to chargers without long waits and fast charging is essential if there is hope EV's are going to be widely adopted. Curbing abuse will help but as Tesla reaches 500k car's per year more has to happen.
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